English philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that life itself was the end of man. He thought the state should be constructed in such a way so as to preserve man’s life. Stability, in the form of protection from internal and external enemies, was viewed by him at the best way to preserve man’s life. A long life lived under dictatorship, where a man had absolutely no freedom, would be to Hobbes preferable than a shorter life lived with both freedom and risk.
To simply live is not the end of man (and by end I mean telos, refer back to the first post in this series if you are not familiar with this term). Hobbes’s understanding is wrong because he wrongly believed that man is only material.
When man is only material (only a finite body) death becomes the last thing and earthly life is viewed in terms of all or nothing. Some like the stoics or Buddhists deny that life is anything. It is merely an illusion or a hardship to be endured. Others like Hobbes think life is all and sacrifice all other values (freedom, equality, love, etc) simply to stay alive.
But one who lives like this is not truly alive. One must not live for life in order to live. How can one experience joy and hope, courage and triumph, love and loss if they are only focused on remaining alive? They will be constantly worried and anxious and live a selfish life in order to secure their life. What type of life is that?
Not only does this false view lead to a loss of enjoyment of life, it leads to a loss of value and morality, which in turn makes life even less secure. If man is simply an accidental, random collection of molecules (only material, only a physical body made by matter that originated in the big bang) what moral duty does man have? Why shouldn’t one random collection of molecules harm another random collection of molecules? If man is just material he has no more value than anything else that is just material (like a slug, a plant, or a rock). If man has no value, there can be no duty to him: there can be no morality.
We see the consequences of this philosophy every day. If there is a collection of atoms within us that happens to be inconvenient to us, we terminate the pregnancy. What value is there in those blobs? Oh wait! They have stem cells, quick, save them! Violent crime is incredible. Barely a week goes by that a person doesn’t walk into a shopping center or a school and shoot a bunch of people. It barely registers with us anymore, we have come to expect it.
Why do people randomly shoot others? I wonder why more people don’t. If life itself is just a cosmic accident and you don’t happen to enjoy it, why not end it and bring down a few with you? If your being ends at death, no one will be able to hold you to account. This is the consequence of the false philosophy of materialism. This lack of value for other humans in fact makes life less secure. Since we don’t value human life it is much easier for us to take it from another.
Hobbes thought that life itself was the end of man. But there is a great paradox in his theory. In trying to secure life, Hobbes’ philosophy loses it. By worrying about death, we cannot enjoy and live life. And if death is our final end, then we are just a collection of material. If we are just a collection of random chemicals, molecules, and electrons, then we have no value. If we have no value there is no morality and nothing inherently wrong with ending the life of another. In trying to elevate life (by making it our goal to preserve it) Hobbes denigrates it and in fact makes our life less secure.
To simply live, this is not the end of man.
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